


gone

by ab82



Category: Scream (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-27
Updated: 2016-08-27
Packaged: 2018-08-11 10:16:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7887262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ab82/pseuds/ab82
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a year after the killer is revealed, emma and her friends finally have some semblance of a normal life at their respective universities.</p><p>then emma gets the text that will change her life. and nothing is ever the same again.</p><p>(aka the one where a new killer takes audrey, and emma's left anchorless in the aftermath.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	gone

**Author's Note:**

> so i'm pretty sure i traumatized myself writing this. i cried like a baby, you have no idea. but i wanted to write my own take on how i believed emma would grieve for audrey. thank you for reading.
> 
> please don't read this if you're easily upset by mentions of death and grieving.

It’s 2 PM on a Saturday when Emma Duval receives the picture. 

 

The two-year anniversary of Will Belmont’s death is in a week. She’s almost halfway through her fall term at a university two hours from Lakewood. Noah and Audrey are at a film school thirty minutes away, Brooke at the same school as her and, coincidentally enough, her roommate.

 

Emma still gets the attacks sometimes, but they’ve gotten a lot better and less frequent since she started seeing a therapist specializing in post-traumatic stress disorder. Kieran was sentenced to life in prison just a month ago. Piper’s buried by the orphanage, at her mother and Ms. Lang’s request. The remaining Lakewood Four, plus Stavo, hang out every other weekend. It’s not a perfect life, but it’s more than Emma would’ve dared to dream of a year ago. She’s happy.

 

And then, in the midst of studying for her Psych 101 test (how ironic is that), she gets a text. It appears to be from Audrey, so Emma doesn’t think anything of it until she opens the message. 

 

It’s a picture of Audrey. Tied up and apparently unconscious, accompanied by the caption,  ** Missed the mask? Well, Audrey did, too. You left her freshman year, but if you don’t get here soon, she might be the one leaving you this time around. ** Emma’s heart is instantly in her throat, and she dry-heaves into her trash can. _No. Not Audrey. Anyone but Audrey._

 

Brooke hears the retching and is at her side in a flash. “Emma, what’s wrong?” she asks, a cool hand rubbing at the overheated skin on Emma’s back.

 

“The phone,” she manages to gasp out before her stomach rolls again. 

 

“Okay, just breathe, sweetie. Let me see that.” Brooke grabs Emma’s phone off the table, and it only takes her a second to read the text before she’s choking on her words, too. “Oh — oh my God. We, we have to call the _police_ , Emma.” Brooke starts dialing 911, but Emma wrenches the phone from her grasp.

 

“No! No police,” Emma snaps. “We can’t wait for them. She’ll die before they get there. We have to call Noah. He can help us.” 

 

“Em, you’re not thinking logically, Noah can’t—”

 

“ _Please_ , Brooke,” Emma cries. “I _can’t_ lose her.” _I wouldn’t survive it_. 

 

Brooke sighs and dials Noah’s number.

 

———

By some strange twist of fate, Noah was already five minutes away from campus, checking out the rare comic book shop in town. He manages to brighten the photo enough for them to see Audrey’s surroundings, and Emma feels sick as she realizes it’s the dock at Wren Lake. _Of course. Our place. The place where Audrey and I used to have picnics as kids, and the same place where Audrey shot Piper._

 

Noah insists on driving, since Brooke’s not known for her safety in a car and Emma’s shaking too badly to do much of anything. The trip’s supposed to take two hours, but Noah speeds like a maniac, and they make in there in an hour and a half. Emma tastes bile in her throat as they pull up to the dock and her phone dings with another text message.

 

** You brought friends, so Audrey and I have taken a little detour. Hint: it’ll bring back bad memories for Noah. Oh, and come alone, or your friend might take a little swim. **

 

Emma shows the text to Noah and Brooke, the former of the two cursing loudly when he reads it. But they let her go alone, Brooke’s fingers already punching “911” on her iPhone’s screen as Emma sprints to the lake.

 

Emma’s chest is burning by the time she gets there, but there she is. Audrey, beautiful, tough Audrey, except she’s bruised and battered, tied to a dingy wooden chair and her chin against her chest. Emma double-checks for any trip wires before she allows herself to run up to Audrey and undo the ropes.

 

“Emma?” Audrey murmurs, stirring from her sleep, and Emma could cry. _She’s gonna be okay_ , she tells herself, exhaling in relief as she hears the wail of police sirens in the background. _You got her._

 

“Audrey,” she whispers, arms wrapping around the other girl and holding her tight for just a second, relishing the fact that her best friend is _here_ and _breathing_ and _alive_ , and yes they have a new killer to worry about, but none of that matters right now. Audrey’s what matters; she’s what’s always mattered, and suddenly Emma has so much that she wants to say, wants to tell the girl how much she loves her and the infinite amount of regret she has for _ever_ abandoning her.

 

The sirens get closer, and the girls break apart as Emma finishes with the last of Audrey’s ties and helps her stand up. “C’mon,” she says softly, “let’s get you out of here.” She’s got a hand on Audrey’s back, and she’s leading her away from all of this, away to safety, when suddenly she hears a loud _crack_ and feels warm wetness spreading through Audrey’s tank top.

 

Everything around her comes to a stop, and she can only watch in horror as Audrey collapses to the ground.

 

Emma’s on her knees in an instant, mumbling out pleas of, “ _No, no, what? Stop, stop, please_ ,” her trembling hands coming to rest against Audrey’s sides. The damage is clear, a single bullet hole right by what Emma knows to be Audrey’s liver, scarlet quickly spreading around the site of the wound.

 

Audrey’s shaking, lifting up her head and then quickly letting it fall back down as she tries to look at her injury. “No, no, Audrey, don’t, it’s okay,” Emma begs. “You’re gonna be okay. The police are almost here. I’ve got you.”

 

“Emma, I can’t breathe,” Audrey coughs, and Emma’s eyes widen as she sees blood bubble out of the corner of the girl’s mouth.

 

“No, you can breathe, it’s okay. You’re gonna be fine, Audrey.” _Audrey, Audrey, Audrey_ — she says it over and over again like a prayer, even as she pulls off her T-shirt and presses a corner of it to Audrey’s wound.

 

Blood’s soaking through her fingers in seconds. Everything is red, Audrey’s stomach is red, her lips are red, hands are red as she tries to grasp at herself, and Emma’s own hands are red. _Red, red, red._

 

“I really loved you, Emma. You know that?” Audrey wheezes out. Her face is pale, too pale, and it only makes the blood on her face appear in even more vivid contrast.

 

“No, Audrey, _stop_. Don’t talk like that. You can still love me. I love _you_ ,” Emma sobs, leaning in closer to press her lips to Audrey’s forehead. 

 

“Tell Noah that I love him. And that he better not replace me.” 

 

“He won’t need to replace you, Audrey, you’re not going _anywhere_ ,” Emma says fiercely, one bloodied hand coming up to stroke Audrey’s cheek. The girl is cold, so _cold_ , and Emma winces as blood smears across Audrey’s face. She hadn’t thought there would be _so much_.

 

“You gave me some of the best years of my life, okay? And yeah, freshman year sucked without you, but only because I loved you so much. Cuz I missed you,” Audrey whispers. “Thank you for coming back.” 

 

“Of course I came back,” Emma says softly, tears blurring her vision. “I was stupid to let you go in the first place. And I’m sorry it took me so long to realize that.” 

 

“I’m sorry I brought Piper to Lakewood,” Audrey mumbles. It’s clear that it’s becoming difficult for her to keep her eyes open, and Emma’s chest squeezes at the realization. “I never meant to hurt you, Em,” Audrey continues, voice thick with tears. “I’m so sorry that everyone died. I’m sorry about Kieran, and Piper, Riley, Will… all of it.” She closes her eyes, but Emma won’t let her do that. _You can’t leave me_ , she wants to scream, but instead she just shakes Audrey’s shoulder lightly, enough to make the other girl open her eyes again.

 

“Don’t be sorry, Auds. You couldn’t have known. It’s not your fault, and _I forgive you_ ,” Emma breathes. “But what I won’t forgive you for is leaving me. _Stay with me_.” Her own words twine around Emma’s heart and dig in like thorns. _Stay with me, God, please just stay with me. Don’t leave me. I’ll die if I lose you._

 

“I’m sorry, Emma. I want to, but I don’t know if I can,” Audrey says softly. Emma’s sticky and soaked in the girl’s blood, but she won’t accept that. She _can’t_.

 

But Audrey’s breathing is getting shallow now. Emma’s peeked at her mom’s textbooks and taken enough anatomy classes to know that the bullet likely hit a major blood vessel. But she doesn’t want to hear that, doesn’t want to let herself say that, because there’s no way she’s only _just_ discovered the depth of her love for this girl and now she’s bleeding out under her. _No._

 

“I love you,” Audrey gasps with a shuddering breath. 

 

Emma abandons the T-shirt and leans forward to press a kiss to Audrey’s mouth. She tastes like iron and strawberry, but Emma doesn’t care. She just wants this to work, wants something in this kiss to tell Audrey to _stay_ , to order her body to stop shutting down and just _stay here with her_.

 

“I love you too,” she murmurs against Audrey’s lips. Those lips curve into a smile, a beautiful, heartbreaking smile that makes Emma ache with all the words unsaid.

 

And then she’s gone. Audrey’s still against her, and Emma shatters.

 

———

Emma is vaguely aware of what happens around her in the immediate moments after Audrey’s death. She hears Noah and Brooke come up behind her, followed by the police, and Noah’s scream of “ _Audrey_!” as he sinks to his knees will ring in her ears for days. She watches as silent tears stream down Brooke’s pretty face and paramedics swarm around her and Audrey, but her fatal injury is one they won’t know how to fix. She feels Sheriff Acosta’s hand on her arm, trying to tug her away from Audrey’s body, but she stays firmly planted where she is, knees digging into the grass.

 

“Don’t take her away,” she wails, heart stuttering as she glimpses the familiar stark white of a body bag. The EMTs are still working on Audrey, trying to get her heart started again, but Emma knows that Audrey’s not coming back from this. She’s gone. _Gone._

 

“Emma, no one’s taking her away,” Sheriff Acosta says. “They’re trying to help her.”

 

“She’s gone, Sheriff,” Emma sobs out. “They can’t help her.” 

Noah’s still screaming. Brooke’s still sobbing. And Emma wishes it was her lying cold on the ground.

 

———

They catch Audrey’s killer hiding out in the woods surrounding Wren Lake. He was just a garden-variety psychopath, a “ _troubled_ ” 22-year-old man who read Ms. Lang’s book on the previous killings and became inspired by Kieran Wilcox. He’d written Kieran a few times in prison before renting a room at the Crescent Palms Motel and messaging Emma.

 

Sheriff Acosta tells her all this. He doesn’t explain how the guy got Emma’s number, or how he’d managed to drag Audrey from her dorm room early this morning without anyone noticing.

 

It’s not enough, but nothing will ever be enough. No words could ever explain away the pain of feeling Audrey’s life ebb away under her fingertips. No apologies can ever mend the Audrey-sized hole in her heart. No amount of money, despite the hundreds of thousands that the killer’s family’s lawyer offers her, will ever amount to what Audrey was worth to her.

 

She doesn’t eat. She doesn’t sleep. She can barely even breathe. She doesn’t return to her dorm room that night, spends it in the hospital with symptoms of acute shock, and is discharged to stay with her mother “ _indefinitely_ ” the next morning. Maggie offers not to do the autopsy, to leave it to someone who won’t be biased, but Emma insists. She doesn’t want a stranger touching Audrey. Mr. Jensen agrees. (Mrs. Jensen died last year from her cancer, so she’s not around to give her input. It makes Emma think of how she’d held Audrey until her tears subsided. She’d give anything to do that again.) 

 

Emma still technically has her job at the coffee shop, had agreed with them to work whenever she came home on break, so they’re happy to see her when she comes into the shop three days after Audrey’s death and asks if she can work for a few weeks. (She keeps it a secret from Maggie at first, but her mother finds out quickly. There’s not much you can hide from Maggie Duval in this town, not after the killings.)

 

Emma settles into a robot-like routine. Wake up, eat, brush your teeth and do your hair, get dressed, make coffee, eat, make coffee, go home, eat, sleep. She took a hammer to her phone the day the police gave it back to her (though not before copying all her conversations with Audrey and saving them to her laptop). She doesn’t want to ever see that picture again. 

 

Noah and Brooke stop by. Stavo, too, even though their relationship doesn’t really go beyond drinking with Brooke and Noah and the occasional party. Emma won’t see any of them. They make her hurt. She sees Noah, and thinks of Audrey. She sees Brooke, and thinks of Audrey. She sees Stavo, even, and thinks of his father, leading her away from Audrey. It all comes back to Audrey.

 

The autopsy gets delayed by a few days due to “legal issues” (mostly, Mr. Jensen initially refusing to accept that his daughter was gone and doing some internal debating with God). Maggie doesn’t get to start on it until Audrey’s been dead for three days, the same day that Emma goes to the coffee shop to ask for her job back. 

 

Emma walks in on the tail end of it. She’d _forgotten_ , in the monotony of her day, and she drops the brown paper bag with the bagel she’d brought for Maggie. Her mother hears the bag hit the floor and turns around, face instantly falling. “Oh, _Emma_ , you shouldn’t be here,” she says, stripping off her gloves to go hug her daughter, but Emma doesn’t let her close.

 

“No, Mom. I need to stay. I need a moment with her. Alone,” Emma begs. Her mom’s blocking her view of Audrey, but she can catch a glimpse of thick black hair, and her chest feels like it’s on fire.

 

“Okay, honey,” Maggie nods. “I just finished up, so… I can go start on my report outside. Take your time.” She kisses the top of Emma’s head as she pushes through the doors to go to the sink outside, and Emma swallows hard at the reality that’s now in front of her.

 

Audrey’s on the table, cold and white, a sheet draped over most of her. But Emma can see her face and arms, and that’s enough. She takes a deep breath, pulls up a chair, and sits by Audrey. Her beautiful blue-green eyes are wide open, but they’re blank. They’re staring at nothing.

 

And being confronted with it, the way things really are now, makes something inside of Emma crack. Her eyes water, a lump forming in her throat, and tears are pouring down her cheeks before she can stop herself. The floodgates open, and Emma’s sobbing now, taking in huge gulps of air when her chest burns with the need to breathe.

 

She sits like that for a few minutes, just crying, until her tears subside and Emma feels a little less heavy. But there’s still things she wants to say, things she didn’t get to say when Audrey was still alive. So Emma pauses for a moment, then takes Audrey’s hand. It’s cold and stiff against the soft heat of her own skin, and maybe it’s gross, but Emma’s been to enough funerals in her lifetime to know that taking one last comfort in the body of someone you loved isn’t weird. So she keeps holding Audrey’s hand, and she talks.

 

“I’m so sorry,” Emma whispers, watching as her tears splatter on the tiled floor below. “You trusted me to keep you safe, and I failed you. I _failed you_ , Audrey. _I’m so sorry_.” She’s sobbing again, but it’s more contained now, controlled enough that she can still talk. “And I’m sorry that I let you think I didn’t love you for so many years. I hurt you so badly for my own selfish reasons, and then when you told me you’d loved me, I didn’t even acknowledge it. I didn’t get to tell you how much I loved you until you were nearly gone. And I never got to tell you how special you were to me. You’ll never know—”

 

She can’t do it anymore. She chokes on her words and is interrupted by her own crying. But someone else finishes the sentence for her.

 

“She does know, honey. She knew then and she knows now,” Maggie says softly, stepping closer. “I’m sorry, I just came in to get my pen—” 

 

Emma cuts her off, letting go of Audrey’s hand and turning to bury her head in her mother’s shoulder, chest shaking with sobs. “Mom,” she wails out. “Mom, she’s _dead_. And I _loved her._ She’ll never know how much.”

 

Maggie doesn’t say anything, maybe because she knows there is nothing _to_ say, just rubs Emma’s back until the tears subside. When Emma pulls back, cheeks wet but eyes temporarily dry, her mother grasps her face in her hands and tells her, “Audrey loved you, Emma. I saw it in everything she did for you. And as someone who has been through the same thing, please believe me when I say that Audrey knew you loved her. We don’t always have to declare our feelings for that to happen. She might not be here anymore, but that doesn’t mean she’s not in your heart.”

 

“That’s so cliché, Mom,” Emma breathes, a sad smile forming on her face.

 

“Even if it is a cliché, it’s still true,” Maggie says fiercely. “She’ll always be with you, Emma. And no one can _ever_ take away the love you shared, or the things that you did for each other. Promise me you’ll remember that.” 

 

With shaking hands and a shattered heart, Emma promises.

 

———

Audrey’s funeral is on a Thursday. Emma writes her eulogy in the car that morning. 

 

Noah, Brooke, and Stavo are all there, of course. Brooke is beautiful in her black dress, even with her red-rimmed eyes and messy hair. Stavo’s keeping her close, and Emma can’t help but smile slightly when she sees the cotton handkerchief that he has in his pocket to dab at Brooke’s tears. Noah looks haunted, his shoulder blades prominent under Emma’s hands as she hugs him, and his lip quivers when she breaks away and he gets a closer glimpse of her outfit.

 

“Is that her jacket?” Noah asks, voice high and fragile.

 

“Yeah,” Emma says, and he pulls her close so they can cry together. 

 

She’d shown up at the Jensen house yesterday afternoon. Her mother had told her that Sheriff Acosta was planning to give Mr. Jensen Audrey’s phone, but Emma had wanted to do it herself, so the sheriff had let her. Mr. Jensen’s eyes had filled with tears when he’d seen her, but he’d taken the phone and invited her to go spend a moment in Audrey’s room. 

 

Being there had hurt. The room was still Audrey at its core, bed still messily unmade from the day she’d rolled out of it to move in to college, dresser drawers still full of SD cards from the years past. Emma hadn’t wanted anything, really, had left quickly before the memories got too much and told Mr. Jensen that Noah and Brooke would probably want to come by — but she had taken one thing.

 

Audrey’s black leather jacket, well-loved and worn from years of adventure and laughter. The elbows are dull from where they’d rubbed against the scratchy fabric of Noah’s couch, propped against it while Audrey and Noah had played video games, and there’s cracks in the leather in certain places, but it’s _Audrey’s,_ so Emma doesn’t care. It smells like her, of woodsy perfume and peppermint shampoo, and Emma decides to wear it to the funeral that day, because it comforts her. It kept her from totally breaking in half when she’d left Mr. Jensen’s on Wednesday, and she’d slept with it that night. She promises herself she won’t do that again, lest she lose the scent of Audrey for good. 

 

She sits at the very front, wedged between Brooke and Noah, breathing in the scent of Audrey on the jacket collar as they go through the motions of the funeral. It all feels far too familiar, memories of Eli and Riley and Nina flashing through her mind, but it all stops being so familiar when the minister says, “And now, Emma Duval, Audrey’s best friend, with a few words she’d like to say.” 

 

Her legs are shaky and she almost trips as she walks up to the podium, and Emma could die as she stands there and looks out at the sea of faces there, as she is reminded of all the people who loved Audrey so much. Because she _was_ so lovable, even if she put on that tough-girl act and tried to pretend that she wasn’t.

 

“Audrey and I met when we were three,” she begins. “We were in the same pre-school class, and we got into an argument over the color chart. My mother had taught me some of the fancier names for colors, like ‘teal’ and ‘scarlet’, and I guess Audrey’s mom hadn’t yet, because when our teacher pointed to the blue and I said ‘sapphire,’ Audrey and I debated for ten minutes over who was right. Turns out we both were.” She feels a sad smile forming on her face as a few people laugh at the story.

 

“Things were like that with us a lot,” she continues. “We were always arguing, because we both wanted to be right. But one time, after a really bad argument, Noah said something to me that I’ve always remembered: ‘The people with the most intense arguments are also usually the people with the most love for each other.’ Of course, that’s not always true, but it definitely was for me and Audrey. She was a fireball, this unstoppable force of nature, and I—” Emma chokes a little bit, tears obscuring her vision for a moment, but she runs her fingers over the hem of the jacket, and finds it in herself to keep going.

 

“I never told her how much I admired that about her. How she didn’t let anyone get in her way, not for anything. She was so smart, too. _Wicked_ smart, as she would’ve said. And funny. Audrey could defuse a situation like no other.” Emma shakes her head, chuckling a little as a few moments in particular flash through her mind. “But she was also loyal. _So_ loyal. When we were fourteen, I made a mistake and wasn’t friends with her for a while. I hurt her really badly, and I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive myself for that. But she did; she took her time in doing it, but she did forgive me. And she made the last two years of our friendship count, for sure. When Audrey passed, our friendship was the best it had ever been.”

 

And here comes the hard part. The part that might make someone in the crowd mad, but the part that needs to be said. The part that everyone needs to hear, because Audrey didn’t get to, but Emma at least wants it to be _known_. She wants the whole world to know. “But what Audrey and I had extended beyond a friendship,” she adds, voice trembling slightly. “The last thing she ever said to me was that she loved me, and she’ll never get to know just how much, but I told her that I loved her, too. Because I did. I loved Audrey Jensen with all of my heart, and I still do. She means more to me than words can describe. And I hope that someday, somewhere, I’ll be able to finally tell her that.”

 

Emma locks eyes with Mr. Jensen in the crowd, but he doesn’t look mad. He looks… _happy_ , almost. Tears are shining in his eyes, but he’s got a little half-smile on his face, one that makes Emma think he maybe grew out of the days of grounding Audrey for her sexuality and had finally started to accept his daughter for who she was. She couldn’t be happier to see that. “Audrey, I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to save you. And I’m sorry that I never got to say everything to you that I would’ve wanted you to hear. But you will always, _always_ , be in my heart,” she finishes.

 

She stumbles away from the podium in tears, but Brooke and Noah encase her in a group hug when she returns to the pew, and Emma knows she’s said everything she needed to.

 

———

One year later, she sits on the memorial bench by Audrey’s grave, fresh roses on her tombstone, and thinks, _I sure hope Audrey Jensen got all her last wishes._

 

Mr. Jensen didn’t bury her in a dress — she and Noah had made sure of that. A scholarship has been created at her film school in her name. And Noah has turned the title of “Bicurious and the Virgin” into a comic book series; it’s already sold out several times over at their local shop, and last Emma heard, he’s in talks with a publisher in New York to make it a national thing. Brooke has decided to become a forensic psychologist, in the hopes that she’ll one day be able to bring justice for girls like Audrey. She and Stavo have been officially dating for seven months now.

 

And as for Emma, well, she’s taking things slow. She returned to school two months after Audrey’s death and joined the Pre-Law program. She can’t always prevent deaths like Audrey’s, but she sure as hell can fight to make sure that killers like Audrey’s never see the light of day again.

 

She doesn’t have a boyfriend, or a girlfriend. She’s still in mourning for what she’s lost, and for all she knows, it might be another year before she finds it in herself to even have a crush again. But that’s okay. She carries Audrey with her, always. Audrey’s in her favorite places, whispering about how beautiful the view is and how she wishes she had her camera. Audrey’s in her favorite music, hidden in the lyrics and singing the words all off-tune, like she always used to. Audrey’s tucked behind the bookshelves of the university library and pops up in the girls’ nights she shares with Brooke every Friday.

 

But above all, the thing that has helped Emma recover the most is the knowledge that Audrey _knew_. When she and Noah had moved Audrey’s things out of her dorm room, two weeks after her death, they’d found an SD card from the day before she’d been kidnapped.

 

They’d played it on Emma’s laptop, of course. It was a vlog, Audrey talking to the camera with a nervous little smile on her face. _“I think Emma might like me back,”_ she’d said. _“I’m gonna ask her out tomorrow. Worst case scenario, I get rejected and we have to work on our friendship again, but at least my feelings are out on the table. Best case scenario… It’s like I’ve always imagined, and she really does love me back. Fingers crossed._ ”

 

Emma keeps the SD card at the top of her desk drawer. And whenever she forgets, whenever she thinks that maybe Audrey died not knowing, she watches it. 

 

She’ll never get to see that beautiful smile again, and she won’t ever get to take Audrey on that date they’d both dreamed about… but it’s enough. It’s all she’s got.

 

And Emma just hopes that, wherever she is, she’s happy. 

 


End file.
